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Team Obama's sequester scare

But they haven’t been issuing a lot of warnings about how it’s slowing down the rollout of Obamacare.

Because sequester or no sequester, the administration is trying to keep work on the core elements full steam ahead.

The Department of Health and Human Services wouldn’t respond to questions about the automatic budget cuts and health law implementation. But both advocates and critics of the law expect HHS to use all the flexibility it can muster to keep it moving — although it could get harder if the sequestration is prolonged.

“I’ll put it this way: When they talk about dogs and cats sleeping together, the hell-on-earth consequences of the sequester taking effect, one of the things they have not mentioned is that they won’t be able to implement the [health law],” said Tevi Troy, former deputy secretary of HHS under President George W. Bush.

The administration may complain about the bluntness of across-the-board cuts, but when it comes to Obamacare, it “will move heaven and earth” to get it done, Troy predicted.

That may mean sacrificing some other priorities to the cause of pushing the health law across the finish line. It includes continuing to cobble together money to finish the federal exchange, which got no explicit funding of its own in the health care law and is far more costly than initially envisioned because HHS has to build them in 25 states, way more than anticipated.

But while friends and foes of Obamacare are confident that the administration will be able to move forward, they know it’s going to get harder.

“Both for reasons of historical judgment and the plain and simple importance of giving this law the best possible shot at succeeding, I believe that money and staff will be found,” Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in an email to POLITICO. “If somebody has to be pulled off another task, they will be. If another contract has to be delayed, it will be.”

Key parts of the health law are exempt from the sequester, notably the money to subsidize insurance for eligible people and the Medicaid expansion. Those don’t start until 2014 anyway. But other administrative aspects, including set-up funds, are affected.

An effective 9 percent cut over the next seven months would seem to be cause for concern for Obamacare advocates when federal health officials are all hands on deck trying to get key pieces of the law in place. The exchanges are supposed to open for enrollment this fall and begin distributing premium subsidies next year.

Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, said the sequester does pose problems, especially for the badly needed public outreach campaign beginning this summer to educate a population about Obamacare and help people enroll.